


Handmade

by LittleRose13



Series: The 12 Days of Shipmas 2017 [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 12 days of shipmas, Christmas Jumpers, Christmas Sweaters, F/M, Knitting, learning to knit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 15:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13034526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRose13/pseuds/LittleRose13
Summary: December 2008In which Ginny finds a new calling in life (sort of).





	Handmade

**Author's Note:**

> The 12 Days of Shipmas, Day 8 - the prompt was 'Christmas jumpers'

_December 2008_

This year, Ginny had her Christmas presents _nailed_. 

It just felt right, now she had three children of her own, that this was the Christmas she learned to knit. 

Everybody loved Grandma Molly’s Christmas jumpers, and she was still rolling them out every year, somehow managing to accommodate for all of the extra family members. So Ginny decided her contribution to the Weasley women’s legacy could be scarves. Everybody liked scarves didn’t they? 

She pictured it in her head, everyone opening a fluffy, warm scarf hand knitted by their Auntie Ginny, in a colour and pattern personalised to the receiver. It could become just as much of a tradition as her mother’s jumpers. Weasley Christmas Jumpers and Weasley Christmas Scarves.

And knitting didn’t look like it was too difficult. 

Ginny had a brilliant afternoon shopping for wool with Luna, baby Lily attached to her front and a promise from Harry, who was looking after the boys, to take as long as she needed and to bring Luna home for dinner. They visited the strangest little shop in Diagon Alley which seemed to be simultaneously a haberdashery and a book shop, but also sold plants and served different types of tea. It was sort of as if Luna had been personified into a shop. 

“How many balls of wool do you need for one scarf?” Ginny asked her friend curiously, picking up one in a particular gaudy shade of yellow. 

Luna looked blank. “As many as it takes.”

“I thought you could knit, Lu?” Ginny looked down to see that Lily had fallen asleep. 

Luna shook her head. “Oh no, but I’d love to learn with you!” 

Ginny rolled her eyes at her friend, who had definitely given the impression she knew how to knit. She reached for four balls of the bright yellow. “I think that looks about right for one scarf.”

“How many scarves are you making?” Luna asked, running her fingertips over a fluffy, blue wool. 

She held her hand out to count on her fingers. “Let’s see: five brothers, plus Harry, Hermione, Angelina, Audrey and Fleur, Mum and Dad, seven nieces and nephews, three children, one Teddy.” Ginny was left with three fingers held up and a pensive expression on her face. “So that's… twenty-three? Blimey, that’s quite a lot really.” 

Luna didn’t look as worried as Ginny suddenly felt at the prospect of knitting twenty-three scarves when she didn’t even know how to knit yet. 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

The shop owner looked amused at Ginny’s purchase of forty-six balls of wool (she had advised Ginny that four per scarf would be far too much). But Ginny was pleased with her bag stuffed full of wool, with a few pairs of knitting needles thrown into the top. 

After dinner that night, when she and Harry had put the children to bed and she’d read Al a total of four different stories before he was ready to sleep, she sat cross legged on the living room floor and excitedly tipped the balls of wool out onto the floor.

“Wow,” said Harry. “That is a _lot_ of wool.” 

“Isn’t it great?” Ginny gushed, pulling a ball of orange wool towards her and unwrapping it. “I’m making Ron’s first, in Cannons colours.” 

With the instruction sheet the shop owner had given her and the knitting needles in one hand, Ginny unravelled a length of wool.

“Isn’t there a spell for this?” Harry watched her uncertainly. 

Ginny waved a hand at him nonchalantly. “I don’t need that, I’m sure it’ll be much quicker this way.”

Forty-five minutes later, Ginny was lying face down on the living room floor, a twisted knot of orange wool tangled around one of the needles. 

“How’s it going, love?” Harry cautiously re-entered the room (he’d left to check the children were still asleep through all the swearing). 

Ginny raised her head and looked at him forlornly. “Shit.”

“Is this Ron’s scarf?” Harry asked uncertainly, picking up the little twist of orange wool which was barely the length of his hand. He forced back a laugh which Ginny noticed and she sat up and back on her heels, taking it from him. She balanced it across her collarbones as if she were wearing it as a scarf. 

“Yes, do you think he’ll like it?” Harry snorted and she was laughing before she could think about it, Harry joining in with her. 

“Is that spell looking tempting yet?” Harry asked.

“No, I want to do it by hand like Mum does! I think maybe I just need someone to _show_ me how to do it, instead of just following these instructions.” She picked up the sheet of parchment and dropped it again, letting it flutter to the ground lamely. 

“You should ask Hermione, she can knit,” Harry mused. 

“Good idea, I’ll Floo her in the morning,” Ginny stood up, cramming all her knitting supplies back into the bag and tucking them into the corner away from Al’s toddler toys. She yawned widely and took hold of Harry’s hand as she left the room, pulling him upstairs with her. 

“You know, everyone will still love your scarves if you use a spell,” he said gently, in a whisper as they got nearer to the children’s rooms. She kissed him on the cheek and smiled.

* * *

It was the next morning and Hermione had responded to Ginny’s Floo by popping round with baby Hugo. She stared at Ginny in a mix of horror and amusement. “Let me get this straight, you want me to show you how to knit so you can make twenty-three scarves in time for Christmas Day next week?” 

Ginny nodded eagerly. “Don’t tell anyone else though, it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“Ginny, do you know how long it’ll take you to make _one_ scarf?” 

“An hour?” Ginny estimated.

“It took me over an hour to make each tiny elf hat back in school,” Hermione explained gently. 

Ginny cast around for a solution, her vision of her family all opening a handmade scarf on Christmas Day at the forefront of her mind. Her eyes fell on Lily and Hugo who were respectively sitting and lying on a blanket on the floor. 

“Okay, let’s see. Lily and Hugo are babies, babies don’t need scarves.” She nodded reasonably, trying to encourage Hermione to join in. “I suppose I can make ones for James and Al in the new year. We’ve got them enough presents.  And Harry come to think of it. So that brings it down to only eighteen.” 

“ _Eighteen_?” Hermione caught herself and held her hands up. “Okay, fine, I’ll show you how to do it.”

Twenty minutes later, Ginny was slowly but surely weaving the orange wool together after Hermione had cast on for her. “Oh shit, I dropped another stitch.”

Hermione sighed and fixed the knitting, handing the needles back to Ginny. “Keep going.”

She got the hang of the rows, occasionally handing them carefully over to Hermione so she could pick Lily up and jiggle her around for a second or feed her when she started to fuss. 

“Is it long enough yet?” she asked every few minutes, holding up her creation. 

After working on Ron’s scarf for three hours and being left with a lumpy patch no longer than four inches, Ginny started to suspect she’d been a bit ambitious. 

“Is there a spell I can use?” she asked with the air of someone who hasn’t quite given up but might very soon. 

Hermione shook her head sadly. “You can enchant needles to copy your patterns and knit by themselves, so you could recreate this as many times as you wanted.” Hermione held up the scarf attempt that might have possibly been useful as a blanket for a fairy. “But there’s no spell to knit for you. Believe me, I looked for one in my fourth year.”

“Someone should really get on inventing one of those,” Ginny muttered, holding the ‘scarf’ in defeat. 

* * *

Christmas Day rolled around a week later, and Ginny had wrapped her presents neatly, parcelling them up with the generous batches of his famous shortbread biscuits Harry had baked for everybody’s Christmas gift. They sat waiting under the Christmas tree at The Burrow and Ginny was excited for her family to open them.

“You should all open them at the same time,” Ginny explained, distributing the gifts to her family members. She watched excitedly as they all began to tear into the paper, expressing excitement at Harry’s famous baking. 

“Merlin, Rosie, give that back please, sweetheart.” Ron was the first to reach his present from Ginny and it was unceremoniously snatched away by his three-year-old daughter. 

As Ron reclaimed the present from Rose, everyone else reached the inside of their own parcel. 

George was the first to open his, holding up a pair of knitting needles and two balls of purple wool, tied together with a handwritten label. All around the room, her siblings were holding up identical gifts with grins on their faces. 

Charlie read the label out loud. _“A Make Your Own Scarf Kit, handmade by Ginny Weasley,”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading part 8! I really loved writing Ginny like this, please let me know what you thought!  
> Check out my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/littlerose13writes) for the full list of prompts littlerose13writes 
> 
> Coming up on the 18th December is 'Ice skating' featuring my favourite Slytherin boys again <3


End file.
